bobby previte @ cap college

[mo]

Anybody else go to the Bobby Previte show
at Cap College last night? Anybody else think it sucked?

[Morgan Childs]

I saw the soundcheck, and the following clinic with Bobby. The soundcheck did not give me much of a concept of what the music would sound like, except for a couple things:

1) Grooving Hard
2) Odd Time Signatures
3) Very, Very, Very capable players playing challenging music.

Just WHY did you think it sucked, MO? I'm curious, because I didn't get to see the show and I really wanted to. I don't think it would be possible for a group of players at that level to "suck". Perhaps the sound sucked. Perhaps you didn't understand what they were doing. I highly doubt it "sucked", but I await your reasoning on this...

[mo]

I have no doubt that the players were competent. I just didn't like the music.
Sounded to me like a drummer trying to play bad alternative rock with a bunch of high-calibre jazz musicians whose
time was being wasted. I play a bit of electric bass, so I was especially keen to hear Steve Swallow, and was disappointed that he hardly got to say a word, so to speak. Perhaps this would have been justified by an excellent score, which I don't think this was.
My friend and I both left the show thinking "the emperor has no clothes". I'm curious
if we're just philistines, or if most people felt the same way, or if the music was indeed challenging to the point where some people loved it and some people hated it. Still waiting to hear from the former.. I think,
if it hadn't been for the excellent
Michael Occhipinti set, I would have
felt defrauded.

mo

[Morgan Childs]

Well...

I talked to a friend of mine (a great drummer) who saw the show, and he didn't like it either, but in his case, his complaints were more that the mixing was horrible than that the musicianship was lacking.

Previte has been a major player on the New York scene since the 80's. He's played with everyone, and recorded with the likes of John Zorn and the aformentioned Steve Swallow. He's one of the guys out there making new music. Perhaps he has pushed his definition of what jazz sounds like past what you are used to (and I'm not trying to insult you here). It's just that everyone comes up against walls-- the outer limits of what their ears will accept as "music", but it's important to work past those boundaries for the sake of having an open mind. For me recently, it's been John Zorn's Masada. Some of my favorite players play in that band, but it took me a while to get into what they were doing. Once I listened a few more times, I saw what was going on, and now I love it. It speaks to me, and I feel happy that I LET it speak to me.

On another note, there is NO excuse for a bad mix. There just isn't. That has ruined more than one performance for me (as discussed on another thread) and ends up making the musicians look bad when it was the soundman's concept of what the music should sound like that was lacking.

[John Doheny]

I think maybe we need an adjustment in the semantics here. When I first joined this forum and read through the posts,I encountered a very ..interesting string on a Metalwood concert. It was basically a "he said she said" thing consisting of high level discourse like " They sucked. Did Not. Did too. Oh yeah? Well YOU suck! No YOU suck!"...etc. Followed buy a dogpile of folks insisting that they couldn't possibly suck because they're such good players.Which is ,of course, nonsense. The best musicians in the world occasionally try things that fail, that's how they get to be great.But if we could just henceforth try to minimize the use of terms like "suck", maybe the dialogue could rise above the high-school lunchroom level, and folks like me might be able to openly state that they(gasp) don't much care for Metalwood without being lynched by an angry mob of Brad Turner's students from the 'A' band at Cap.
And yes by God I KNOW what great players they are. I remember like it was yesterday getting cut to ribbons by BT at the jam session at Murphy's about 1993.He came in and I thought he was just some teenage kid in a baseball cap and then he pointed that horn at me and it was all over but the shoutin'.But Metalwood just doesn't fit with my aesthetic right now.Maybe it will again somday, I used to love stuff in a similar bag back in the '70s, like the Crusaders.But right now I'm not rushing out to buy the album.( Bill Clarke is no doubt sending me a letter bomb from Los Angeles right this minute.Look out! It's going to explode!)
Back in the '70s a bunch of us went to see Cecil Taylor.The guy was a monster piano player , but I found the music dry and European and intellectual. I'm an American, man. I need me some grits 'n' gravy with my jazz.But at the time I just thought I was too unhip to really"get it", so I kept my mouth shut. The next day I had a lesson with Fraser MacPherson, who had also been at the concert. I asked him what he thought and he said he didn't dig it. I suggested (impudent young punk that I was ) that maybe it was over the head of a old dude like him. He smiled and said,"Yeah. That's it. It was TOO HIP for me."
So Mo, next time you don't dig something, don't say it sucked. Say it was too hip for you.
Later,
John D.
www.Johndoheny.com (http://www.Johndoheny.com)

[Nimish]

All I know is that the clinic was very good.